Lucknow convention: Maneka Gandhi's presence achieves political credibility

Sanjay, Maneka and Dumpy (bearded, to Sanjay's right) leaving court after Kissa Kursi Ka hearing in 1979: Tempestuous baptism into politicsThe panwallahs of Lucknow knew of her arrival in the city almost before the vast conclave of gathered politicians did. And the posters announcing her controversial convention were as full of portent as the gathering of prizefighting birds collecting for a bout of Lucknow's famous cockfights being held a stone's throw away from the venue.Maneka Gandhi's meeting last Sunday - held in an ancient hall known as the Baradari once the pleasure dome of Wajid Ali Shah - was neither bloody nor banal but notable still in a month of Sundays. It became an event precisely because it was so rigorously labelled as a non-event; her presence achieved political credibility simply because of the shrillness of censure that surrounded it.Minutes after she hit the outskirts of the city on Saturday evening, a mob of about 200 attacked her convoy, shattering the panes and windscreen of her security car and injuring the two accompanying security men. As the driver - of her green Matador made a dash to transport her, two-year-old son Feroze Varun, her brother Viren and two old friends from Sanjay's flying club days - Harry and Madhu Singh - safely to the crumbling Carlton Hotel, whatever curiosity value she held in the city rapidly transformed to unspoken sympathy.Rajiv is no sackcloth and ashes politician, he is a stranger to the dust and dirt of ground-level politics where Sanjay won his spurs......Rajiv has been in politics 15 months but he remains a loner, a scrupulous beginner who is pining to make a fresh start but is hamstrung by his reticent suavity, his primness and his lack of mooringsNext day she remained incarcerated with her party in the heavily-guarded wing of the Carlton till the exact moment she was expected to arrive at the Baradari.All morning, the convention's chief organiser, the sharp-talking, light-eyed Akbar Ahmed, determined to make most of his rebellious bid for political independence, mustered supporters together on the terrace of the Baradari.Orchestrating the entry of the press, posting his own private army of security volunteers, he appeared an incongruous mixture of true grit and nervous sweat. "Do these people appear members of the RSS to you?" he angrily demanded, waving a hand at the milling crowd of khadi-clad volunteers, many of them armed with weapons.Dramatic Entry: In less than 40 minutes it was all over. Making a dramatic entry through the building's backdoor, as a boisterous crowd of between 8,000 to 10,000 spilled over from the terrace to the street to hear her prepared but mostly inaudible speech.Maneka Gandhi had done the deed that had taken her nearly a year-and-a-half to prepare for. It was more than a day's work for the precocious, often petulant, young widow who has been waiting grudgingly in the wings to make her entry into public life as a political entity.For a girl who started life as a model, insinuated herself into a marriage that name alone draws the votes. "I don't want to become another Devraj Urs," quipped one of those Youth Congress(I) split personalities who. after one week of dithering, finally decided to throw in his lot with the winning side, the side of Mrs Gandhi.(From left) Venkatararn, Anjiah, Gogoi and Bhosale: Inept leadersIt is the numbing fear of losing the 'meal coupon' that finally sealed Ahmed's fate. One after another, the condemnations rose to a crescendo. Even die-hard Sanjay loyalists stepped out of their ranks to join the chorus. The pace was set by Sanjay Singh, the Uttar Pradesh Youth Congress(I) president, and one of the closest friends of Sanjay and Maneka, who described the convention as an "anti-party activity". To follow suit was Jagdish Tytler Delhi MP, chief of the Delhi Youth Congress(I), and also a personal friend.Condemnations: Close on its heals were condemnations from Sibte Razi UPCC(I) general secretary, and Ashok Bajpai, an Uttar Pradesh MLA. Bajpai, who fulminated at Ahmed saying that not a single Youth Congress(I) MLA from Uttar Pradesh would join his "anti-party convention", brought additional substance to his threat by virtue of his connections; his mother. Rajendra Kumari Bajpai is an AICC-(I) general secretary.Mrs Gandhi: Faced with a conundrumA common reaction was: "It's a family matter." There was, of course, more to it than that. Condemnation of Ahmed could be twisted into a condemnation of Sanjay Gandhi's five-point programme, indeed his entire political legacy. Said a Sanjay loyalist: "If anyone dared utter a word against Sanjay, we'd have immediately got together to muster at least a hundred MPs to sign a statement condemning the move." The silence was ominous, and some top Congressf I) politicians were moved - anonymously, of course - to assert that a lot of people might even be enjoying the spectacle.In a sense that was hardly surprising, for the party is caught in the throes of yet another transformation. Between 1978 and 1980. her party went in for what one functionary described as a "total transfusion of blood" and the party units down to the block level were chock-a-block with an entire new generation of Congressmen.It was Sanjay who provided a link with the new cadres and was their guiding spirit. Said H. N. Bahuguna, chairman of the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP) who resigned his post as secretary general of the Congress(I) in 1980: "When I was invited by Mrs Gandhi to rejoin her in 1979 it took me just a couple of days to realise that the Congress as we know it had been metamorphosed into something different. It was 'Indira Congress' in name but 'Sanjay Congress' in reality."Like a tireless general fighting with a ragtag army, Sanjay was making and breaking ranks, creating a new hierarchy and switching tactics, all aimed at the single goal of wresting power from the Janata Party. The Congress Parliamentary Party-I (CPP-I) as it exists today, is flush with people hand-picked by Sanjay; 180 of the 354 MPs were given nomination directly by him. Every fourth MLA of the Congress(I) in the states is his direct District Congress Committee-I (DCC-I) nominee; each PCC(I) executive member and chief was chosen by him.It is the pick of this lot men like Tytler, Kamal Nath, Gufran-e-Azam, who have been cut to size, not to mention officials Sanjay elevated over the claims of others like former Delhi Lt Governor Jagmohan and former Delhi Police chief P.S. Bhinder. Says one Sanjay confidant: "It is only Sanjay with whom we could relate. He baptised us into politics." It is notable that in these loyalists' homes, a smiling portrait of Sanjay dominates living rooms.Sanjay Creations: The 1980 chief ministers were mostly creations of Sanjay, men like Antulay, Karnataka's Gundu Rao, Orissa's J.B. Patnaik and Bihar's Jagannath Mishra. many of whom have been embroiled in controversy.Earlier, they were catapulted into prominence by Sanjay during the Emergency and the Janata period. Antulay was a little-known politician who was picked by Sanjay to be made an Aire general secretary during the Emergency. Gundu Rao, who was merely the Youth Congress president in Karnataka, could not visualise in the wildest of his dreams that he would be made the chief minister by Sanjay.Jagannath Palladia, a timid Harijan leader who lived for months in a small room in the outhouse of the Gandhis' residence at 12, Willingdon Crescent in New Delhi during the Janata period, had to pinch himself to believe that Sanjay had made him the chief minister of Rajasthan.Rao had the reputation of being a back street tough of Bangalore; Antulay had come under a cloud even a decade earlier when he was a minister under the late V.P. Naik; Palladia, as a former minister of state at the Centre, had too undistinguished a career to be rated seriously.Still the magic worked as long as Sanjay was at the helm. Talking informally, an old friend of the Gandhi family invoked the simile of a circus ring, saying: "Sanjay was like the ringmaster who knew how to prod the lion into bounding through a wheel of fire, or to coax the tiger into a bow." He added with discernible sarcasm: "Circus animals do not take orders from an unskilled master."That much seems true, at least of the first 15 months of Rajiv's novitiate at the helm of party affairs - much too short a period in which to judge political performance. Within weeks of Sanjay's death when Mrs Gandhi decided to launch Rajiv in preference to - Maneka, it was generally believed that the time-tested Sanjay brigade would accept his leadership without demur. But the transition has not been easy. Between him and the party falls the long shadow of inexperience and inhibition. The khadi cap does not easily fit.Muted Resentment: It simply isn't possible to change the ways of large legions of MPs and MLAs who had strong personal loyalty to Sanjay any more than it is to replace them with a different kind of politician. There is surprising - if muted - resentment within sections of the Sanjay brigade at Rajiv's hesitant ways. Some clearly miss the swashbuckling Sanjay style.The reasons are not hard to find. Rajiv is no sackcloth and ashes politician, he is a stranger to the dust and dirt of ground-level politics where Sanjay won his spurs. Sanjay used his organisational clout to give his party a framework of sorts and put a clutch of hard-nosed chief ministers in office.The Rajiv era, in contrast, has barely got off the ground. In fact, it is hardly an era. Rajiv has been in politics 1 5 months but he remains a loner in politics a scrupulous beginner who is pining to make a fresh start but is hamstrung by his reticent suavity, his primness, his lack of moorings.The much maligned 'Rajiv coterie' (it is not yet labelled a caucus) comprising Arun Nehru. MP, and aides like Sidhartha Reddy, Vijay Dhar and Arun Singh, are really a cordon sanitaire around him. As the widely acknowledged 'Mr Clean', he is like a general at the head of the wrong army. a ragtag but potent force put together by his brother. Recruits are hard to find for an army of a new kind, Rajiv's dilemma is real. If he tries to intervene in the manner of a Sanjay he will earn censure for being another "extra-constitutional authority".And because he doesn't, he comes across as an ineffective amateur. Nor has it helped matters for Mrs Gandhi to insist - a necessary precondition to keep the parly together - that only those who stood by her in the 1978 party split and were with her in her darkest days be given prominent office. The room for manoeuvre is severely limited.Stubborn Leader: Its first indication came in the wake of the Antulay saga when after being thrown out of power, he led Mrs Gandhi a madcap polka. Supported by at first the party High Command. Antulay resigned only in January after four months of furore - when Justice B. Lentin of the Bombay High Court had found him guilty of having given cement quotas to users in exchange for donations to his trusts. However, within hours of the judgement, the entire Congress Legislature Party (I) of Maharashtra was huddled in a conclave. reposing their faith in Antulay's leadership and hurriedly adopting a resolution which pointedly referred to Mrs Gandhi's own refusal to step down following the adverse Allahabad High Court judgement in 1975.For the party leadership, so embarrassing was the development that the state governor had to be asked the same evening to press for Antulay's resignation, failing which he was advised to dismiss the cabinet. Though Antulay eventually resigned, he left behind an eerie presence-in-absence. The high command sought to counter it by propping up Bhosale. a political flyweight as Antulay's successor. But within weeks Bhosale found himself buried in a mine of trouble. Antulay himself discreetly steered clear of controversy, but his minions and hangers - on in the press and in Bombay's political world got busy digging up skeletons in Bhosale's cupboard, which were brimming over with them anyway.Thus Bhosale was alleged to be a co-respondent in a divorce petition filed by his daughter-in-law against his son two years ago; his otherwise undistinguished past as a member of the Revenue Tribunal was raked up to uncover past taints; rumours gripped Bombay that the Bhosale Cabinet comprised a rapist, a proven thief and a boy-hunter.An impression was effectively created that Bhosale was indeed a passing cloud, while Antulay. sitting primly as the chairman of the state-run Irrigation Development Corporation, enjoyed the situation as well as the immunity that the Government post gave him against "legal harassment".Confused Selection: The party's tumbling image was reinforced by the run-up to the recently concluded Rajya Sabha polls. Outwardly, the task was simplicity itself; the composition of the assemblies would have permitted straight election of over 50 Congress(I) members in the 69 vacancies in the Upper House of Parliament this year.However, things went sour at the very beginning. Apparently few people in what is vaguely called the Congress(I) High Command had a clear idea of individual claims and abilities, or how to satisfy the incompatible interest groups and at the same time find the right candidates.There was also unseemly dithering, Yogendra Makwana, the Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat who had been shifted in January from the Union Home Ministry to the less prestigious Ministry of Communications as minister of state, was first denied renomination but, within half an hour, the decision was reversed. Two other ministers of state, Charanjit Chanana and Sawai Singh Sisodia were not as fortunate. After being kept for days on tenterhooks they were finally guillotined, and that too during the budget session of Parliament - a prime example of unintended rudeness. The irony is that for two weeks this unfortunate two-some had to face the Opposition in a house to which they could not return.In the melee, the most harassed person was Vasantrao Dada Patil, the aquiline-nosed Maratha general secretary of the AICC(I) who is the most senior party functionary after Mrs Gandhi. Patil, who is a senior member of the Congress(I) Parliamentary Board which is, technically, the supreme arbiter in distribution of Rajya Sabha tickets, himself was in the dark about the list.Besieged by newsmen anxious to keep their copy deadlines, Patil was frantically dialing the prime minister's house for the final list of candidates from a late evening press conference last fortnight.It once again highlighted the sad reality that the AICC(I) has been reduced to a mere post-box. Its lack-lustre and often deserted headquarters at 24. Akbar Road is the least important of the party's nerve-centres.The 'pilgrimage shrines' that really matter to ordinary Congressmen are - apart from the prime minister's residence - the spick and span official quarters of Rajiv Gandhi at 2A, Motilal Nehru Marg, and the office of Nehru at 12, Willingdon Crescent. Even the newly opened Youth Congress(I) office on Janpath still smelling of fresh paint, draws more crowds than the AICC(I) office, largely because Youth Congress(I) chief GhulamNabi Azad's well-known rapport with Rajiv.The organisation leaders realise the underlying effeteness of their chairs, but dare not displease the overlords. At the AICC(I) office, the five general secretaries have all been allotted impressive portfolios; Patil looks after administration and parliamentary board affairs, besides the state units of Uttar Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Delhi (ironically, Patil has little Hindi and less English): Bajpai, an Allahabad Brahmin who is a Hindi scholar, looks after the affairs of the north-eastern states and West Bengal; M. Satyanarayan Rao, who is a Rajya Sabha member from Andhra Pradesh, looks after the units in all southern states except Andhra Pradesh; Chandulal Chandrakar. who was recently dropped from the Union Council of Ministers, has been given charge of the state units of the remaining northern states; and G.K. Moopanar a man bubbling with Tamilian wit, is the party's official spokesman on organisational matters.In reality the general secretaries wield just as much power as any clerk in an office. Even the district committees of the party are reorganised and announced in the name of Mrs Gandhi. For instance. Ram Narayan Chaudhury, who led an incredible one-man Rajasthan PCC(I), resigned last year when his mentor Pahadia. was sacked. Since then the PCC(I) has not been constituted, nor has a successor to Chaudhury been appointed. Said Moopanar, who is 'in charge' for Rajasthan: "The case has been put up before the high command."Little Structure: In fact, the party's most solid middle-tier organisation, the district committee, does not exist in a vast stretch of the country. Out of 365 districts. the DCC(I) exists in just 225. In some cases there are committee chiefs all right but no committees as such. In Andhra Pradesh. FCC(I) chief C. Das does not have an executive committee. Lower down the line, he does not have a single properly constituted district committee.The most amazing aspect of the party's organisation is that, at every level, it begins with a leader and then tries to dig downwards, making room Tor committees and workers. "In the beginning," said a senior party functionary in half-jest, "there was a leader..." It no doubt applies from the top right down to the block level organisation. In fact in half the cases where the district committees exist, the block committees do not.Patil, however, claims that organisational deficiencies have in no way been an impediment to the party's popularity; according to him the Congress(I) has 30 million members. In other words, one out of every 10 adult Indians is a khadi-clad Congressman. "They are the silent majority of Congressmen," Patil muses, falling back on a popular cliche. The majority, however, has remained a bit too silent all these years; there has not been a single organisational election in the party since its formation in January 1978.In December 1980, at the last AICC(I) session held at New Delhi's Talkatora Gardens, organisational elections were promised by June 1981. Came June, and they were postponed till December. Came December, and they were postponed indefinitely. There are specious pleas put out by the general secretaries from time to time.Today it is the mid-term poll, tomorrow it is the drought in Rajasthan. Lending a mock-serious touch to it, an AICC(I) office-bearer said: "An organisational election in a party like the Congress is even tougher to hold than the general election."Wary Chief: The real reason is not far to seek. Mrs Gandhi, who holds the dual charge of the Government as well as the party, is wary of sacrificing any of these. But her responsibility as the head of the state claims 18 hours in a day, and often more.The PCC(I) chiefs often need to wait for months to squeeze a five-minute appointment with her. Despite her legendary memory for faces and names, she has hardly any personal knowledge of the various PCC(I) executive members, many of whom belong to a later era in the Congress.This lack of communication was sadly reflected in her choice of chief ministers. When confronted with the task of selecting a successor to Antulay, her blue pencil ran down the list of loyalists' who had stuck with her in 1977, and stopped at the name of Bhosale whom she did not know at all.His dossier only mentioned that he was the law minister in the Antulay cabinet, and that he was the son-in-law of Tulsidas Yadav, a former Rajya Sabha member who was faithful to her when she split the original Congress Party in 1969. She chose Bhosale without going into his antecedents, his predilections and capabilities.In the past 15 months, she has changed five chief ministers, and brought in a whole new crop of people who are unknown quantities as fai as she is concerned and whose ability for survival is suspect. In Andhra Pradesh, she chose B. Venkataram after a week of dilly-dallying.No sooner had Venkataram found the ground under his feet, than Congress(I) MLAs began to desert the party - twice in the first fortnight of his appointment. It took an official denial by deposed chief minister T. Anjiah to squash rumours that he was in open revolt and had formed a new party. Yet, Venkataram turned out to be an injudicious choice, and that too due to Mrs Gandhi's lack of personla knowledge of the options.In Assam, she foisted the government headed by Keshav Chandra Gogoi in haste, only hoping that Gogoi's minority government would be able to find enough MLAs to survive. The fact that it did not bears eloquent testimony to Gogoi's capabilities as a politician. The scenario repeated itself in Kerala where K. Karunakaran, the Congress(I) chief minister who had ridden to ephemeral power through defection, was beaten within weeks at his own game.Dissidence: Under the veneer of harmony, the party is really seething with local dissidence. Last fortnight, three general secretaries of the Karnataka PCC(I) were suspended for "anti-parly activities". Over 500 office-bearers are now suspended in various state units under this catch-all charge.In Assam, Gogoi complained that his ministry fell because of plotting by former Congress(I) chief minister Anwara Taimur. Said Gogoi: "The ministry would not have toppled if Taimur had not worked against me. Just when five Janata MLAs were about to support me, Taimur stepped up her fight against me and they became shy as they could not support somebody who faced so much opposition within his own party."In Bihar, party workers send a memorandum to the prime minister against Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra almost everyday. Each Congress(I) chief minister has to contend with a wall of dissidence each PCC(I) president has to cope with a ginger group which wants to see him out of office."These are minor pinpricks for such a vast party," says Chandrakar with disarming simplicity. Still, Chandrakar's office at the AICC(I) alone receives more than 200 telegrams and letters every day complaining against state party bosses.The rising curve of corruption and misuse of office has. if anything, heightened dissidence. Legislators denied office - and, hence, a share of the lolly - inevitably turn dissident unless they have godfathers who can keep them happy. In the welter of charges and counter charges that fly across the cracks in the party, none ring truer than allegations of corruption.Dilemma: Against this daunting background, Mrs Gandhi's and Rajiv's party is going to the polls this year in at least nine states and a Union territory. It is a mini general election, for which the party has to find over 1,300 candidates for Assembly seats. The task is formidable. As Ahmed says: "These 1,300 people won't drop from the sky. The present coterie cannot produce them from under their hats."Whether or not the party can, the choice ahead is basically what the Congress(I)'s ultimate dilemma is. Having charted a determined course to bring the party on a more even keel. Mrs Gandhi has to see it through if she is to hand over the reins to a Rajiv secure enough to grasp them.The Rajya Sabha elections showed the long way that remains: out of 59 candidates selected last fortnight, as many as 40 old members had to be retained. But a beginning was made with Rajiv putting through almost a dozen that he personally favoured.Till now, Rajiv's has been a continuation of the hand-me-down, marsupial politics of India under the Nehrus. But Mrs Gandhi knows that the party needs a new thrust. The summer's poll is merely part of the count-down to a more important battle looming in the future: the 1985 general election.Time is running out. Mrs Gandhi, in spite of her impressive stamina, her personal mass magnetism and unchallengeable stature knows she needs a well-honed party to win that ultimate test which will buy her another five years.She is too canny not to recognise the challenges being gently wafted in her direction, from the Antulays of her party as much as the Ahmeds. She must feel the stirring resentment in the party's ranks at the concentration of power in a small coterie and the potential danger it heralds.Having once been cut off - to her cost - from the pulse of popular feeling, she is too shrewd a politician to lift her ear off the ground. A past master at political manipulation, she is too experienced not to recognise that encapsulated 20-point programmes are unlikely to move the nation or that dissidents and opponents are liable to ask for a mile if even an inch is yielded to them.But she needs to galvanise her party, to shift it off the Sanjay track and press it firmly on the new route she and Rajiv are charting for it. The moot question is how to do this without upsetting the delicate balance between what is and what should be.If she moves too fast she can lose the loyal legions of more difficult days past. If she moves too slowly, she risks a worse fate at the hand of the electorate. For her it is a riddle within a conundrum.Published By: AtMigration Published On: Oct 16, 2013 14:39 IST--- ENDS ---

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Lucknow convention: Maneka Gandhi's presence achieves political credibility

Maneka Gandhi's meeting last Sunday - held in an ancient hall known as the Baradari once the pleasure dome of Wajid Ali Shah - was neither bloody nor banal but notable still in a month of Sundays.

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